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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Film Review: Saving Mr Banks (John Lee Hancock) 2013

Every now and then a film is released
that has such an overt conflict of interest that it can make you cringe.Anyone who has seen Happy Gilmore will recognize that product placement can ruin a
film, even if it is a comedy.However
the new film from Disney has just the right level of self-deprecation and
awareness to give different viewers different enjoyments.

The story follows P.L. Travers (Emma
Thompson) deciding whether to sell the rights to Mary Poppins to Walt Disney (Tom Hanks).Disney has invited her to Hollywood so that
she can be involved in the scriptwriting process, but she is cynical from the
start and is horrified that they have included music and animation into her
stoic and serious character stories.

The film is intercut with scenes from
Travers’ childhood where she grew up in Australia.Her father was a banker with an alcohol
problem but a wonderful imagination, who slowly begins to jeopardize his career
with his drunken flamboyance.

The main humour and tenderness of the
film revolves around the differences between American and British values /
imagery.So in America everyone is on
first name terms (even with Walt), and yet she insists that everyone calls her
“Mrs Travers”.Another funny observation
is that in America, “Nobody walks”.In
this respect, Emma Thompson is absolutely brilliant as the cantankerous yet
principled stiff-upper-lip Brit.Her
performance is so layered with strengths and vulnerabilities that she reminds
me of her other role as a lonely author in Stranger
Than Fiction. (The way in which she reacts to the song-writing duo is fantastic...

As I said before, there are plenty of
visual references to Disney merchandise, which are mostly laughed at by Travers
– especially in a scene where she first gets to the hotel and the room is
swamped with fluffy toys.The film
manages to mock the Disney magic whilst (obviously) simultaneously reinforcing
it, yet by Disney standards the shift is quite subtle.

The film is an obvious homage to Mary
Poppins and classical Disney, and anyone who knows and loves the film will know
that in the ‘60s film, Poppins will always there to save the father figure Mr.
Banks and not the children.So this film
is a continuation/exploration of that theme with a huge emphasis on the idea that
any complications with early attachments to parental figures have huge
consequences later in life. A monologue
from Disney himself also reaffirms this theory.

I saw this film on a Sunday afternoon,
which was the perfect situation to see it in, and felt completely satisfied
with the drama, the gentle comedy and the touching emotive scenes.Emma Thompson is utterly incredible and the
final scenes where she eventually watches Mary Poppins at the premier completely
blew my mind…